One of the curious features of Pacific Coast life is the
startling uncertainty that marks a man's career in the
mines. He may spring from poverty to wealth so suddenly as
to turn his hair white and then after a while he may become
poor again so suddenly as to make all that white hair fall
off and leave his head as clean as a billiard ball. The
great Nevada silver excitement of '58-'59 was prolific in
this sort of vicissitudes.

Two brothers, teamsters, did some hauling for a man in
Virginia City, and had to take a small segregated portion
of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They gave an
outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on
teaming. But not long. Ten months afterward the mine was
out of debt and paying each owner $8000 to $10,000 a month
-- say $100,000 a year. They had that handsome income for
just about two years -- and they dressed in the loudest
kind of costumes and wore mighty diamonds, and played poker
for amusement, these men who had seldom had $20 at one time
in all their lives before. One of them is tending bar for
wages, now, and the other is serving his country as
Commander-in-Chief of a street car in San Francisco at $75
a month. He was very glad to get that employment,
too.

One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of
wore $6000 worth diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was
unhappy because he couldn't spend his money as fast as he
made it. But let us learn from him that persistent effort
is bound to achieve success at last. Within a year's time
his happiness was secure; for he hadn't a cent to
spend.

Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached
$16,000 a month; and he used to love to tell how he had
worked in the very mine that yielded it, for $5 a day, when
he first came to the country. Three years afterward he
attained to the far more exceeding grandeur of working in
it again, at four dollars a day.

The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of
these pets of fortune -- lifted from actual poverty to
affluence almost in a single night -- who was able to offer
$100,000 for a position of high official distinction,
shortly afterward, and did offer it -- and a little over a
year ago a friend saw him shoveling snow on the Pacific
Railroad for a living, away up on the summit of the
Sierras, some 7,000 feet above the level of comfort and the
sea. The friend remarked that it must be pretty hard work,
though, as the snow was twenty-five feet deep, it promised
to be a steady job, at least. Yes, he said, he didn't mind
it now, though a month or so ago when it was sixty-two feet
deep and still a snowing, he wasn't so much attached to it.
Such is life.

Then there was John Smith. That wasn't his name, but we
will call him that. He was a good, honest, kind-hearted
fellow, born and reared in the lower ranks of life and
miraculously ignorant. He drove a team, and the team
belonged to another man. By and bye he married an excellent
woman who owned a small ranch -- a ranch that paid them a
comfortable living, for although it yielded but little hay,
what little it did yield was worth from $250 to $500 in
gold per ton in the market. Presently Smith traded a few
acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped silver mine in
Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a little
unpretending ten-stamp mill. Eighteen months afterward he
quit raising hay, for his mining income had reached a most
comfortable figure. Some people said it was $30,000 a
month, and others said it was $60,000. Smith was very rich
any how. He built a house out in the desert -- right in the
most forbidding and otherwise howling desert -- and it was
currently reported that that house cost him a quarter of a
million. Possibly that was exaggerated somewhat, though it
certainly was a fine house and a costly one. The bed steads
cost $400 or $500 apiece.

And then the Smiths went to Europe and traveled. And when
they came back Smith was never tired of telling about the
fine hogs he had seen in England, and the gorgeous sheep he
had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he had noticed in
the vicinity of Rome. He was full of the wonder of the old
world, and advised every body to travel. He said a man
never imagined what surprising things there were in the
world till he had traveled.

One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of
$500, which was to be the property of the man who should
come nearest to guessing the run of the vessel for the next
twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon, the figures were
all in the purser's hands in sealed envelopes. Smith was
serene and happy, for he had been bribing the engineer. But
another party won the prize! Smith said:

"Here, that won't do! He guessed two miles wider of the
mark than I did."

The purser said, "Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any
man on board. We traveled two hundred and eight miles
yesterday."

"Well sir," said Smith, "that's just where I've got you,
for I guessed two hundred and nine. If you'll look at my
figgers again you'll find a 2 and two naughts, which stands
for 200, don't it? -- and after em your find a 9 (2009),
which stands for two hundred and nine. I reckon I'll take
that money, if you please."

Well, Smith is dead. And when he died he wasn't worth a
cent. The lesson of all this is, that one must learn
how to do everything he does -- one must have
experience in being rich before he can remain rich.
The history of California will prove this to your entire
satisfaction. Sudden wealth is an awful misfortune to the
average run of men. It is wasting breath to instruct the
reader after this fashion, though, for no man was ever
convinced of it yet till he had tried it himself -- and I
am around now hunting for a man who is afraid to try it. I
haven't had any luck so far.

All the early pioneers of California acquired more or less
wealth, but an enormous majority of them have not got any
now. Those that have, got it slowly and by patient
toil.

The reader has heard of the great Gould & Curry silver
mine of Nevada. I believe its shares are still quoted in
the stock sales in the New York papers. The claim comprised
1200 feet, if I remember rightly, or may be it was 800 and
I think it all belonged originally to two men whose name it
bears. Mr. Curry owned two-thirds of it -- and he said that
he sold it out for twenty-five hundred dollars in cash, and
an old plug horse that ate up his market value in hay and
barley in 17 days by the watch. And he said that Gould sold
out for a pair of second-hand government blankets and a
bottle of whiskey that killed nine men in three hours, and
that an unoffending stranger that smelt the cork was
disabled for life. Four years afterward the mine thus
disposed of was worth on the San Francisco market seven
million six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin.

In the early days a poverty-stricken Mexican who lived in a
canyon right back of Virginia City, had a stream of water
as large as a man's wrist trickling from the hillside on
his premises. The Ophir Company segregated 100 ft. of their
mine and swapped it to him for the stream of water. The 100
ft. proved to be the richest part of the entire mine; four
years after the swap, its market value (including its
mill), was $1,500,000. I was down in it about that time,
600 ft. under the ground, and about half of it caved in
over my head -- and yet, valuable as that property was, I
would have given the entire mine to have been out of that.
I do not wish to brag -- but I can be liberal if you take
me right.

An individual who owned 20 feet in the Ophir mine before
its great riches were revealed to men, traded it for a
horse, and a very sorry looking brute he was too. A year or
so afterward, when Ophir stock went up to $3000 a foot,
this man, who hadn't a cent, used to say he was the most
startling example of magnificence and misery the world had
ever seen -- because he was able to ride a 60,000-dollar
horse and yet had to ride him bareback because he couldn't
scare up cash enough to buy a saddle. He said if fortune
were to give him another 60,000-dollar horse it would ruin
him.

The shiftless people I have been talking about have settled
sedimentally down to their proper place on the bottom, but
the solid mining prosperity of California and Nevada
continues -- the two together producing some $40,000,000
annually in gold and silver. White Pine is giving birth to
the usual number of suddenly created nabobs, but three
years hence nearly every one of them will be scratching for
wages again. Petroleum bred a few of these butterflies for
the eastern market. They don't live long in Nevada. I was
worth half a million dollars myself, once, for ten days --
and now I am prowling around the lecture field and the
field of journalism, instructing the public for a
subsistence. I was just as happy as the other butterflies,
and no wiser -- except that I am sincerely glad that my
supernatural stupidity lost me my great windfall before it
had a chance to make a more inspired ass of me than I was
before. I am satisfied that I do not know enough to be
wealthy and live to survive it. I had two partners in this
brilliant stroke of fortune. The sensible one is still
worth a hundred thousand dollars or so -- he never lost his
wits -- but the other one (and by far the best and
worthiest of our trio), can't pay his board.

I was personally acquainted with the several
nabobs mentioned in this letter, and so for old acquaintance
sake, I have swapped their occupations and experiences around
in such a way as to keep the Pacific public from recognizing
these once notorious men. I have no desire to drag them out
of their retirement and make them uncomfortable by exhibiting
them without mask or disguise -- I merely wish to use their
fortunes and misfortunes for a moment for the adornment of
this newspaper article. -- Mark Twain